The Who making progress with new album

The Who have revealed that they are making progress with their new album, but are not rushing the process.

Surviving members Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend are currently at work on their first studio LP since 1982’s ‘It’s Hard’, but have said there is no timetable to the project.

“It will come out when it is ready,” singer Daltrey explained. “What’s the point of trying to give yourself deadlines that aren’t really important? I think we have to get it good before we can finish it.”

Speaking about the writing process, Daltrey told Billboard: “We are doing it in a very different way. All the time that (the late bassist) John (Entwistle) was in the band, we kind of felt we had to go in as a group. Now, it is really only Pete and I, and Pete wants to do all the guitars and some of the bass playing.”

The singer has revealed that he already has three tracks written for the album, but is most excited about a new Townshend-penned track called ‘Black Widow’s Eyes’ which focuses on Stockholm Syndrome – the behaviour of kidnap victims who, over time, become sympathetic to their captors.

“The fact that he’s done that in music and words, and he completely sums up Stockholm Syndrome in this song, is so haunting,” he said. “Imagine how difficult it is for Pete. He doesn’t need to write another song. God almighty, all that music out of one head. But he seems driven at the moment, which is great because I’ve always felt that he was the kind of writer who would write his best stuff at the age he is now. His skills have caught up with his intellect.”

As well as working on The Who’s next album, Daltrey is also involved in a biopic about the band’s late drummer Keith Moon.

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“We’ve had three or four scripts written, and we’ve never quite nailed what we wanted to do,” he explained. “We’ve got a new writer. A very famous writer, a Pulitzer Prize winner indeed. I can’t name him because I don’t know the situation at the moment. You can’t tell someone’s life story in two hours on film.”

He added: “If I can do it, I hope to make a real rock ‘n ‘roll film that will be funny, poignant, sad, celebratory, all the things that Moon was. But if I can’t, I’m very glad that I’m holding the reins and stopping any bad films of Keith Moon being made.”